LOS ANGELES >> Through two weeks of practice, Jim Mora watched the energy and enthusiasm return to his team. The defense understood what it needed to improve during its bye week and confronted the issues. The focus was there and the head coach was confident heading into last Saturday’s game.

Arizona’s Khalil Tate slashed any bit of belief the Bruins had with a 45-yard touchdown run on the fourth play of the game and he continued to trample on UCLA all night. Now the Bruins must rebuild their shattered egos in time to face Oregon on Saturday.

“When you’re teetering on the edge of confidence and something bad happens to you immediately, human nature is to go, ‘Here we go again,’” Mora said Monday. “And so one of the things you have to do (is) a great job of fighting and hoping you can provide for your players a sense of hope and confidence. … So we have to move away from being fragile and move into being confident.”

At the halfway point of the year, UCLA’s bowl hopes are also balancing on the edge. With tough road games remaining against Washington, Utah and USC, the Bruins (3-3, 1-2 Pac-12) have to capitalize on home games with Oregon, Arizona State and California for a chance to avoid missing back-to-back bowl games for the first time since 1989 and 1990.

UCLA doesn’t have a strong foundation on which to build its confidence. The Bruins are on pace to allow 3,756 rushing yards in 12 games, which would be the most allowed by a UCLA team in a season since 1945, the first year for which records are available. The current mark for futility is 2,793, set in 2005. The offense has committed 15 turnovers, and with only five defensive takeaways, UCLA has the worst turnover margin in the Pac-12.

Issues of tackling and turnovers have followed the Bruins for the past month. The coaching staff harps on them constantly. But Mora also questions whether continuing to do so may be planting seeds of doubt as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“It’s a dance that you have to play out and try to figure out,” Mora said. “Every year that I’ve ever coached, you come across issues on offense and defense where things aren’t happening the way you wanted and you have to figure out the best way to approach with your players to move them through it and get them to a positive place.”

With little game success to draw upon to uplift the defense, safety Adarius Pickett said last Saturday that building confidence must come from film study and communication.

“We’re all as one,” Pickett said. “So we need to play a team defense at the end of the day, and we’re gonna work extremely hard on that to make sure that we come through for next week against Oregon.”

Quick hits:

UCLA’s road game at Washington on Oct. 28 will kick off at 12:30 p.m. PT with a TV broadcast on ABC, ESPN or ESPN2. … Mora is hopeful that defensive end Jaelan Phillips (ankle) can “work back into the rotation this week” after the freshman missed his third straight game last weekend. The athletic training staff is monitoring Phillips’ lateral movement to determine if he will be able to play. … Mora said Monday it was too early to judge running back Jalen Starks’ injury status after the sophomore sprained his ankle against Arizona.

Thuc Nhi Nguyen has covered UCLA for the Southern California News Group since 2016. A proud Seattle native, she majored in journalism and mathematics at the University of Washington. She likes graphs, animated GIFs and superheroes.